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Art Quotes by Leo Tolstoy

53 Art quotes by Leo Tolstoy

All Art quotes Leo Tolstoy’s page

Tolstoy says art is a way to share feelings we have lived. He describes it as a bridge between personal experience and colors, sounds, or lines that others can feel. He also warns that art should not be treated only as pleasure, but as a condition of humanity.

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Art should cause violence to be set aside and it is only art that can accomplish this.

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“Where there has been true science, art has always been its exponent.”

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Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.

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All art has this characteristic-it unites people.

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By words one transmits thoughts to another, by means of art, one transmits feelings.

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Art lifts man from his personal life into the universal life.

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Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is great matter.

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The activity of art is... as important as the activity of language itself, and as universal.

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Man's mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their completeness, but the desire to find the causes is implanted in man's…

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Art is the uniting of the subjective with the objective, of nature with reason, of the unconscious with the conscious, and therefore…

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Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is a great matter. Art is an organ of human life,…

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“show them, not in reasoning but in life itself, the joy of general union beyond the barriers set up by life itself”

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A real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between himself and the artist.

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The appreciation of the merits of art of the emotions it conveys depends upon an understanding of the meaning of life...

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The artist's mission must not be to produce an irrefutable solution to a problem, but to compel us to love life in…

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To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of…

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The idea of beauty is the fundamental idea of everything. In the world we see only distortions of the fundamental idea, but…

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People understand the meaning of eating lies in the nourishment of the body only when they cease to consider that the object…

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The life of our class, of the wealthy and the learned, was not only repulsive to me but had lost all meaning.…

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True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society…

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“Only by assuming an infinitesimally small unit for observation - a differential of history (that is, the common tendencies of men) -…

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“But perhaps it is always so, that men form their conceptions from fictitious, conventional types, and then—all the combinations made—they are tired…

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In spite the mountains of books written about art, no precise definition of art has been constructed. And the reason for this…

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“To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then by means of movements, lines,…

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In the evolution of knowledge-mistaken and unnecessary beliefs are forced out and supplanted by truer and more necessary knowledge. So too in…

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If people lacked the capacity to receive the thoughts of the men who preceded them and to pass on to others their…

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“We are accustomed to understand art to be only what we hear and see in theaters, concerts, and exhibitions, together with buildings,…

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“He considered it his duty to keep up with everything of note that appeared in the intellectual world. She knew, too, that…

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Real art, like the wife of an affectionate husband, needs no ornaments. But counterfeit art, like a prostitute, must always be decked…

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“We talked of a future life, of art, service, marriage, and education; nor did the idea ever occur to us that very…

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Every work of art causes the receiver to enter into a certain kind of relationship both with him who produced the art,…

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Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the…

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“[from Some words about 'War and Peace' ] For a historian considering the achievement of a certain aim, there are heroes; for…

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Great works of art are only great because they are accessible and comprehensible to everyone.

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Art is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feeling.

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“The one thing necessary in life, as in art is to tell the truth.”

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“Pestsov maintained that art is one, and that it can attai its highest mainfestation only in conjunction with all kinds of art.”

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Art can compel people freely, gladly, and spontaneously to sacrifice themselves in the service of man.

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The political is not compatible with the artistic, because the former, in order to prove, has to be one-sided.

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“The goal of the artist is not to solve a question irrefutably, but to force people to love life in all its…

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More by Leo Tolstoy

These joys were so trifling as to be as imperceptible as grains of gold among the sand, and in moments of depression she saw…

The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the kingdom of God.

“I already love in you your beauty, but I am only beginning to love in you that which is eternal and ever precious –…

Energy rests upon love; and come as it will, there's no forcing it.

“If you only knew what those society women are, and women in general! My father is right. Selfish, vain, stupid, trivial in everything—that's what…

To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds,…

To speak of it would be giving importance to that which has none.

Once we're thrown off our habitual paths, we think all is lost, but it's only here that the new and the good begins.

“He knew she was there by the rapture and the terror that seized on his heart. She was standing talking to a lady at…

Rest, nature, books, music...such is my idea of happiness.

“He was not to blame for being born with an irrepressible charachter and a mind some how constrained.”

I ask one thing only: I ask for the right to hope, to suffer as I do. But if even that cannot be, command…

The idea shared by many that life is a vale of tears is just as false as the idea shared by the great majority,…

To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind…

True life is lived when tiny changes occur.